I once had a primary school teacher who had a unique method of dealing with classroom hygiene. When he detected an unsavoury odour in the room he would direct his ‘trained’ henchmen to move slowly around the classroom sniffing the shoulders of all the pupils. The offending schoolboy would be identified, ‘It’s him Sir!’ and despatched to use the ‘facilities’. How his henchmen, who were fellow pupils, were ‘trained’ I can’t remember, but their sense of smell did seem to be related to the amount of cow-towing and availability of toffee or bulls eyes from potential offenders. A recent report from a team of researchers at Amersham Hospital in Buckinghamshire has offered an altogether more beneficial use for ‘sniffing’. Dermatologist Carolyn Willis and her team have trained six dogs of different breeds to detect the urine of patients with bladder cancer. Dogs are widely recognised for finding smells that humans miss and 15 years ago The Lancet reported the use of sniffer dogs in a melanoma clinic. The Amersham researchers hope their work may lead to the development of early-detection screening methods for bladder cancer – though the possibility of making an appointment to see a dog may be some time away. However there is bad news for dog snobs. It seems that of the six different breeds used in the tests, no one breed outperformed the rest. So perhaps when it comes to sniffing, all dogs are created equal.
Margaret Wall
Margaret Wall is a photographer specializing in black and white, producing her images using classic cameras and traditional hand-printing.
Born and brought up in London, Margaret has lived in the West Country for over 30 years. After studying sculpture at art college, the birth of her first daughter in 1973 increased her determination to live in the countryside so she and her husband moved west. Her traditional role of staying at home, looking after her family and raising her three children brought with it the freedom to develop her interest in the arts and explore different media and means of expression. Pottery became a passion and she eventually set up a studio at home, producing hand thrown domestic ware and sculptural pieces.
Five years ago, Margaret began to take a serious interest in photography and became fascinated by the power of the monochrome image and the magic of the whole darkroom process. She studies at Dillington House, achieving a Royal Photographic Society Distinction in applied and professional photography and continues to work there with other photographers.
Her family, children and now grandchildren are still a central part of her life as is the beautiful countryside in which she lives.
Her work is currently on show at the Beyond the Vale exhibition in Lyme Regis. Her photographs are reproduced in the accompanying book of the same title together with two of her articles written for The Marshwood Vale Magazine.
Margaret’s series of flower and plant studies will also be exhibited as part of Somerset Art Weeks. This is the second time her house in South Petherton has been opened as an exhibition space for SAW and this year she shares the venue with the potter Christine Buckler and Monica Murphy, stone carver and enameller.
The Beyond the Vale exhibition in Lyme Regis ends on Tuesday 7th September. Somerset Art Weeks run from 11th – 26th September.
Up Front 09/04
Summer is a great time for medals. Country shows, village fetes and even open days offer the opportunity to see some form of animal, (man, woman or otherwise), parade around with a cup, a ribbon or a sparkling disc. Now that the Olympics are over and winners are given ‘hero’ status, we can look forward to a raft of new faces opening next year’s village fetes, children’s nurseries and flower shows. Though many people claim we heap too much praise on our athletic ‘heroes’, a Warwick based philosopher contends that some top athletes fulfil a vital social function, as they can provide happiness, hope, inspiration, release from care and a sense of national identity. Dr Angie Hobbs from the University of Warwick, agrees the term ‘hero’ can be questioned, saying: “A sportsperson cannot be a hero on the same scale as a D-Day veteran, yet a community’s longing for heroes to cheer, motivate and unite them will still continue in peacetime. Sport provides the chance for peacetime heroes to emerge. And many sporting events – such as running, jumping, swimming, throwing and wrestling – celebrate skills which humans originally needed to hunt and fight – in short, to survive.”
Whether winners or qualifiers, people like Paula Radcliffe, Kelly Holmes and Honiton’s Jo Pavey can hold their heads high and open as many fetes as they wish – it takes physical and moral courage to produce their sporting achievements, and in a negative world, that offers welcome inspiration.
Up Front 08/04
The Prime Minister may be surprised by a recent report from a West Midlands historian, that ‘binge drinking’ is not exactly a new phenomenon. While Tony Blair announced recently that binge drinking risks becoming the ‘new British Disease’, historian Angela McShane-Jones points out that the practice actually began in the 1660s. McShane-Jones’ examination of 17th century broadside ballads – the equivalent of today’s pop music – pamphlets and court records, revealed that drink and drunkenness went hand in hand with political allegiance, as drink and song became linked with politics. The widespread ritual consumption of wine, or health drinking, developed as an expression of loyalty to King and Church. This was a practice of Cavaliers, Tories and Jacobites. Angela McShane-Jones, from the University of Warwick, said: “Binge drinking is far from a modern problem. ‘Saint Monday’ was a phrase indicating the inability of people to work on a Monday because of the way they had entertained themselves after church the day before.” Another recent report from the research company Mintel, suggested that in fact Germany is now top of the European league for beer consumption. Mintel found that last year the average German adult drank 255 pints of beer, 35 more than the average British adult. It makes you wonder really whether Germans are drinking to their government’s health more than the British are. Cheers Tone!
Michael Walton
A resident of Beer in East Devon, Michael Walton was born in London, in 1932. He went to a school founded by his mother, in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. When Michael was eight, he heard a reading of a letter written by the founder of the Order of the Cross, John Todd Ferrier. This began the inspiration for his life’s work. From then on, the wonder of Ferrier’s message was with him throughout his childhood and as a young man.
Michael studied music and craftwork with Dolmetsh, later he spent three years at the Royal Academy of Music where he came under the personal influence of Vaughan-Williams. The three years 1969-72 were spent creating music at Emerson College, with students of the Michaelic Impulse and under World Vision of Rudolf Steiner.
In 1975, he began his career as an author and has published twenty-six titles. The final volume, Grail, has been read aloud in the Anchor Inn, Beer, his second home.
Now, aged 72, he plans to retire or perhaps find a new career. He was dubbed ‘Bard of Beer’ two years ago and now feels that even more accomplishment is possible.
Ron Frampton
Ron Frampton has spent a lifetime living and working in his native West Country – on the Dorset, Devon and Somerset borders. He was born in a game-keeper’s cottage at Courshay, Hawkchurch, on the western edge of the Marshwood Vale and grew up in the shadows of the ancient hill fort of Lambert’s Castle.
He has spent a lifetime in photography and photographic education and is recognized as an outstanding practitioner in his field of traditional black and white photography: landscape, people and architecture. Ron holds many prestigious awards and was recently awarded a Fenton Medal, the highest award to a member of the Royal Photographic Society, for the advancement of the art and science of photography.
Ron has curated numerous UK exhibitions and has taught applied and professional photography at Dillington House, Somerset, for almost twenty years, his reputation ensuring a continuous and exciting programme.
Over the past two years, Ron has contributed substantially to the Marshwood Vale Magazine as design consultant and photographer. He has coordinated photographs and stories by a group of photographers who have put us in touch with local people and everyday life. Many readers have commented on the wonderful photographs that now appear each month in the magazine.
A Fellow of both the British Institute of Professional Photography and the Royal Photographic Society, Ron serves as Deputy Chair of the RPS Adjudicating Panel – Applied and Professional Photography. He examines worldwide submissions at Fellowship level.
The forthcoming group exhibition, Beyond the Vale, curated by Ron, includes 95 evocative images taken by the twenty photographers who, over the past three years, have documented the landscape, architecture and people in this beautiful part of the West Country.
Ron says: “If you have enjoyed seeing the photographs in the Marshwood Vale Magazine, why not come and see more of these beautiful images at our exhibition and meet the photographers – you will be delighted.”
The exhibition is from 22 July – 7 September 2004 at the Town Mill Gallery, Mill Lane, Lyme Regis, Dorset, open 10am – 5pm daily, including weekends, admission free.
Up Front 07/04
A young design student at Northumbria University has come up with a novel way to monitor how tired footballers are while playing a game. David Evans, from Woodley in Cheshire, has created a shirt which has in-built pulse and sweat monitors that alert managers to players’ heart rate and hydration levels. Apparently the shirt will use sensors to record the electrical activity of the heart and send signals to a computer on the team bench, alerting managers, coaches and physios to any abnormal rhythms.
Silicon gel based strips are connected to the top of the players’ backs and react to sweat loss to monitor hydration levels, indicating if a player is fatigued or dehydrated and needs to be substituted.
Additionally a sensor on the shirtsleeve allows the bench to communicate with players out on the pitch, by sending radio waves to a transmitter that gives off a small vibration. This alerts the player to look towards the bench when necessary.
The potential change in the value of players could be huge. No more million pound transfers for footballers – the big money would be spent on computer hackers. Their job would be to take control of the opposing team’s computer and ensure that at the crucial moment, perhaps during a penalty shoot-out, (sound familiar?) the kicker is prodded into looking away just as he kicks the ball. Could this be England’s great chance? Even better news for footballers’ wives is that the shirts are washable!
Gijs Van Hensbergen – Parallels and Echoes
Gijs van Hensbergen talks to Fergus Byrne
The day Gijs van Hensbergen’s Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon arrives in the post is the same day that more than 300 people are massacred in a school in southern Russia. It is an irony that is not lost on the author, who found many parallels with the current climate of unrest while editing the final draft.
The book tells the story of a painting produced by Pablo Picasso over a six-week period in 1937. Painted on more than seven meters of canvas that Picasso had to literally squeeze into his studio in Paris, it was a response to the decimation by bombing of the Spanish city of Gernika (Basque spelling), the spiritual homeland of the Basque people. It has come to symbolise for many the horror and fruitlessness of war and atrocity and has become a symbol of man’s brutality and inhumanity.
A resident of Bridport in Dorset, Gijs van Hensbergen doesn’t claim a strong family influence for his interest in art. A ‘corporate orphan’ whose father worked for a multinational, he grew up travelling the world. Having studied medieval Dutch and German and not found it overly inspiring, his change of direction to study art was more by chance than design. One day while walking through Portman Square he saw a beautiful building, walked in and asked what happened in it. “They said History of Art” he remembers. “I never knew it existed so I applied and got in.” About two months before finishing his degree he was offered a job with an art dealer in London and found himself selling paintings worth half a million pounds. “I did that for three years,” he says. “I wasn’t a particularly gifted dealer but that was where I learned so much about American Art. One day someone suggested I should do research so I went back to the Courtauld to do a doctorate.” He didn’t finish his doctorate but did meet his wife Alex. They went to live in Spain and it was there that he wrote his book A Taste of Castile.
His highly acclaimed biography of Gaudí, which revealed more about Gaudí’s personal life than had ever been reported before, was published in 2001. However, Picasso was always close to van Hensbergen’s heart. “I was incredibly lucky,” he says. “I had three of the worlds top experts on Picasso as my tutors. Anthony Blunt, John Golding and Christopher Green. John Golding was particularly inspirational. His love of Spanish culture was a great influence.”
Although Guernica has been the subject of dozens of books, Gijs van Hensbergen’s offering probes the historical background to the painting without dwelling on art history. This makes for compelling reading. He tells the story from the painting’s beginnings in the Spanish civil war, through its use as a weapon in the propaganda battle against fascism, then its role as a symbol of reconciliation when it returned to Spain after the death of Franco and the re-establishment of democracy in that country.
Without unnecessary detail, it tempts the readers’ imagination with snippets of the social world in which the artist lived during his life in exile. Photographs of Picasso with lovers and friends add an extra dimension to the historical context of the Guernica period.
Exhaustive research, including taking out adverts in, and trawling through archives of, local newspapers, allowed van Hensbergen to trace the movement of Picasso’s masterpiece as it travelled through England and America against a background of political wrangling and intrigue. The efforts to get the painting back to Spain were particularly difficult. Much gossip and obfuscation needed to be untangled and van Hensbergen doggedly pursued the detail to present an intriguing and moving picture of the events and people involved.
Setting the painting against a historical background highlights, even more, the almost chameleon likeability of Guernica to be all things to all people. “It has almost a human presence,” he says, “something that changes as we change, something that has changed history and looks different at different times.”
The painting has an ability to reach people at different levels with a compelling message but that message can only be interpreted by each and every individual. Van Hensbergen says, “You stand in front of the painting and teenagers who turn up chatting are suddenly silenced, they look stunned, some possibly not knowing what they are looking at.”
As the event and the painting it inspired merge into one, the lie, perpetuated by Franco supporters that the bombing of Gernika actually never happened, still echoes in some corners of Spain. The late Sir Michael Culme-Seymour of Wytherston in Dorset was on a ship in the Bay of Biscay on that fateful night and is quoted in the book saying, ‘It was horrific. From out at sea we could see the smoke rise. Of course, we couldn’t know then the real target.’
Setting such an important and powerful painting against a political and social background serves to cement Picasso’s vision and passion to the event that inspired it.
Today the horror of war and the senseless brutality of which the human being is capable can be flashed across a TV screen as it happens. Picasso’s considered, yet deeply provocative response to the same senseless cruelty shows the potency of art when used as a tool to both horrify and heal. Gijs van Hensbergen has taken a powerful painting and highlighted not only its importance to the world of art but also its vital role in history.
His book has taken the most important work of the most celebrated artist of the twentieth century and offered it to a wider audience, in a world that is in dire need of listening to its message.
Sir Anthony Caro
A pivotal figure in the development of sculpture in the 20th century, Sir Anthony Caro is commonly referred to as Britain’s greatest living sculptor. Born in Surrey in 1924 he is celebrating his 80th birthday this year with an exhibition at Kenwood House in London from July 1 – 25.
After studying sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools in London, he worked as an assistant to Henry Moore and came to public attention when he exhibited large abstract sculptures brightly painted and standing directly on the ground.
His innovative work has helped elevate abstract sculpture to a level of acceptability that has paved the way for many artists to focus on their own vision, rather than follow established pattern. We asked him if he felt the ‘figurative versus abstract’ debate in sculpture, could today be put to rest. “I don’t think that it is a valid debate,” he says. “I think the debate is between good art and bad, not between non-figurative and figurative. And I think that there is good art in both and bad art in both. I have found that I can span it, I don’t mind whether I am working figuratively or abstractly. I don’t want to know that difference.”
Already an enormous influence on the work of younger artists, his use of materials was very industrial in the 60s and 70s. Speaking of that early work he says, “It certainly was not pastoral and it still is not. But I use any material that is useful, easy to work with and does what I want it to. And it happened that steel did do that. So, in a sense, my work was urban rather than pastoral, but I would say there wasn’t so much materials then. I still do the same thing. I still go to scrap yards. There is a wonderful scrapyard near Winchester. I go down to the South of France and I make clay sculptures there.”
As patron of Dorset Art Weeks he offers a powerful inspiration to any artist hoping to develop their work to new levels of recognition. We asked how difficult might it be for artists living outside an urban environment to be successful. “I don’t think it is very easy for a Jackson Pollock to come out of West Dorset necessarily, because I think you have got to have some contact with other artists really. On the other hand look at St Ives and how that has become a centre. So it is possible for a place to become a centre. But I think total isolation is not terribly healthy because you don’t get quite enough input.
“Personally I am a believer in communication and everybody talking to each other and saying, ‘what do you think about this’ and ‘I’ve got this idea’ and ‘let’s see what you’ve done last week’. I think that is very fruitful but I don’t know how much that happens in London even. I think it is less likely if you are shut away.
“But on the other hand there are some very good artists in Dorset and I get surprised when I go around and see some studios and I come away and think, ‘my God that was good and I didn’t even know it existed.’ So that can happen too. There are no rules, are there?”
His view on collaboration is borne out in his work on the Millennium Bridge. Described as a blade of light over the Thames, the bridge was designed jointly by Arup, Foster and Partners and Sir Anthony and is a piece of landmark engineering and design.
Although he studied engineering – did he ever dream that one day he would help build a bridge over the Thames? “No. Never. If I had become an engineer it would have been bridges that I would have liked to do or that sort of thing. It didn’t work out in that sort of sense at all because we had a very good engineer indeed on the bridge and we had a very good architect, so I never had to worry about that side of things at all. The worst worry on the bridge was the damned planning and trying to make it happen. That was the difficulty. There were three years of talk before you could start building. This is why I am so glad I am not an architect, I think they have a tough time – keeping your vision.
“I do think it is a beautiful bridge. Norman Foster managed to get that thing through all the hurdles and in the end of it he has got something very beautiful. It worked out very well.”
At 80 Sir Anthony shows no signs of tiring. He doesn’t feel the need to go through the tiresome processes involved in public building again. Speaking of the bridge he says, “The sculptural aspect of that was cut back a lot, although the bridge itself is ok, but the stuff on the Southside was changed a great deal and the stuff on the north side should have gone right up to St Paul’s. It was cut back too much and I don’t want to go into the public realm very much.”
However, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t consider other collaborations. If the opportunity is right it should be considered, he says. “Somebody came to see me the other day and said ‘I know a jeweller in Madrid. Have you ever thought of making any jewellery,’ and I hadn’t. I am not particularly interested but I might do it, I might just go and see. That’s the sort of thing that comes up. Or somebody says have you ever worked in paper three-dimensionally and I say ‘No. Let’s try’. I have worked in paper three-dimensionally actually, but I mean things come up like that and you don’t miss opportunities, you try and follow up on them, I think.”
And is there such a collaboration planned at the moment? “I have got a sort of scheme afoot, which we might follow up. But I would like it to be more trouble-free than the bridge. We haven’t got very far. I have made a sculpture, which Norman (Foster) says ‘My God it is a building, we’ve got to make that into a building’. Maybe we’ll do that.”
Sir Anthony’s exhibition at Kenwood House in July will consist of 16 new works and will be accompanied by a new book by Julius Bryant, with photographs by John Riddy. A major retrospective planned for Tate Britain in London in January will include some of the ground-breaking sculptures that made his career.
